Working class towns/cities are awful, anyone agree?

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I've always lived more or less in a working class town or city. Somewhere with an industrial past of coal mining or slate mining or cotton mills being the basic reason for its existence. I've travelled to more affluent places with a more diverse history and I've always liked them more but can't afford to live in them yet.

Does anyone agree working class settlements suck? Whenever I try socialising at night I'm surrounded by people who are full of machismo, admire big muscles, people who speak curtly and lack almost any manners at all. At times when I've overcame my Asperger's social awkwardness and managed to make a few witty points to people they've barely registered. The people here think being funny is throwing someone or dancing or yelling at someone, it always has to be something loud.

Ooh - contentious! I love talking about class (it's one of my obsessions!): I come from a fairly affluent garden suburb; bland, boring and no character. At least these areas you come from have some charm about them.

Most of my friends come from working class areas of Aberdeen. I suppose because I'm lower-middle class (my parents are taxi drivers) that I have at least something in common with them.

Not all working class people are the same: one of my friends won a scholarship to a very prestigious private school in Aberdeen, and is very intelligent - far smarter than me! Then again, I suppose he's the exception rather than the rule; but you get my point.

Last edited by ARW_AS on 28 Jun 2009, 11:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

I grew up in a working class city which once upon a time was a ship building city. For the most part I can ignore the goons and enjoy the city's beautiful architecture, parks and lively atmosphere. There are idiots no matter where you go. Some of the middle class women in my classes at college have truly shocking and ignorant views of the world. It comes from being sheltered I guess and taking all their opinions from the media. The more they have the more fearful they are of losing it to the dreaded.....*whispers menacingly* immigrants!! !

Oh and OP, love the name! I've always loved that word. It sounds so much nicer than the modern equivalent

I wish there was a class based on intelligence rather than perceived wealth.

I suppose having one main industry in a place leads to cultural homogeneity and therefore, some of the worst places for Aspies.

Middle middle class person here. I live in a strange area, with lower lower class people and upper middle class people.

The problem is one of perception.

I live in an area where NASCAR is a religion, and most of the fans can be pretty idiotic a**holes.

However, I've been among the intellectual "elite" and high-society people and find them to be snooty a**holes.

Some of the best people I've known work unassuming blue-collar jobs. They're smarter and wiser than you would presume by looking at them, and they are decent folk.

Likewise, most of the "intelligent" people I know put so much on their education that they don't realize they are idiots.

Just because the city glitters from a distance doesn't mean the streets aren't full of filth.

I think it's all cities that are awful. The electromagnetic radiation + polluted air & water turn most people into jack asses. That, and it's just common sense that the more humans in any given area, the more beastly competition there will be for resources. The cities are filled with narcissists, my area especially as it's high-income.

In less than a year, I'll be moved out of the city and be done with it for good. That's how much I despise the insanity I witness daily.

Want world peace? Spread us out, calm the world down..

I come from working class origins and most of the people do as well. In the areas where I live they are always like some sort of ghetto where no one would want to live. The people tend to have the intelligence of a peanut and educational attainment of a similar level. There is often no respect and I find that being from a working class background is pretty useless for an Asperger syndrome person anyway unless you are lucky enough to got to university to get a degree and 'get out of the ghetto' but I never had the support in order to do so. I now wish I did in order to get out of the ghetto and become a chemist. I never lived in nice areas anyway only in some sort of ghetto or another. The areas where I lived are real dumps anyway.

My favorite classes are the "working class" and the "intelectual upper-middle classe" (what in US you call "liberal elite"). In both, there are people where you can spend interesting moments:

- in the "intelectual upper-middle classe", you can discuss philosphical issues, the problems of the world, etc.

- in the "working class", usually you spend your free time doing things (playing cards or snooker, go fishing, and - in the case of teenagers - having street fights or stealing things) or talking about this

In contrast, in the traditional "middle class", the only thing that you have is endless "small talk", or talk about the family, the cousins, the marriages and divorces, etc. I personally hate this kind of talk.

But I should make a point: my "special interst" is politics, and the working class in my country is (or was) strongly politicized. Perhaps it is the reason (or one of the reasons) that I find "working class culture" acceptable: a tavern with shop stweards talking against the government politics is a more interesting place to me than a coffee with middle-class/mildlle aged women talking about the new girlfriend of her son.

Yuck. I know exactly what you're talking about. That or comparing other people's social status, judged by what college they went to, how much they earn, what their homes cost and how much expensive Stuff they've accumulated. There are exceptions, but the middle classes seem, to me, to be the worst class for enforcing tiny little social rules that have no real point apart from distinguishing 'them' from 'us'.

Worse still are those working class people aspiring to be middle class - they're the most judgmental people I've met. When someone refers in conversation to someone or something else being 'common', I back away quickly; that's a dead cert for you having chanced on one of these middle-class wannabes. They also tend to want to sweep anything they see as 'nasty' under the carpet; I grew up being told 'people like us' didn't suffer from depression, didn't get divorced, didn't get pregnant out of wedlock, when all those things had actually happened to people I knew. If I tell you the town I grew up in recently had a petition to force a proposed drug rehab center to go set up in the 'sleazier' town up the road because 'this town does not have a drug problem'...you get the idea.

My favorite 'class' of people to be around is 'alternative' people, and they don't really give a damn about class.

When it comes to "class", I neither have any problem with the working classes, neither with the Upper Class and a kind of academic professionals, but the most of the people between are horrible.

I lived in working class areas and do live currently, far beyond my financial situation (I do not pay rent) in one of London's most affluent areas. Both are fine to live in, but visiting friends in suburbia, with the orderly gardens, total lack of taste I found always depressing. A run-down area, which does display its state is more honest and better to live in than a area where people spend more time in "decorating" their houses in a manner they think is "nice", but is in fact just kitsch.

In my experience you can live quite well as an outsider within the top and bottom range of society, but when you are placed between the pressure of being like the others and the opinion of the neighbours and colleagues turn easily to a restrain jacket.

Is this Glasgow you're talking about, by any chance? I'm a sheepshagger from Aberdeen myself!

People in 'class' houses topic

We do not have 'class' distinctions here in North America, though in the US there are inner cities nd ghetto-like districts. In Canada, we call them rough neighbourhoods. The housing tends to be cheaper there, but little if anything to do with industry or gentrification, but everything to do with cost and reputation, and the presence of high density social housing areas. These rough districts are slowly being phased out, but it will take some time, at least in Toronto.

Where I live (Barrie, Ontario) is mostly tourist and retail. People with better incomes have government/teaching or health care sector employment, and both parents work if there is a family.

Yep none other than grotty Glesga lol. I quite like the Aberdonian accent, I find it soothing and not as nasal as the Glaswegian accent.

Today I was walking home past a bar and a group of guys were stood outside. Three of them had tied up the one of them with sticky tape and toilet paper to the lamppost. I found it amusing and they were all laughing. So I laughed as I passed in a friendly way.

Their faces all went stone cold and one of them said "He looks like a f***ing Jew." Does that kind of thing happen everywhere?